I've been involved in the Pokémon card game to some degree since Base Set. My parents bought me a few booster packs when I was a kid and, surprisingly, some of them are still in very good condition to this day. Not a lot, but some. I was pretty into it for quite a while after that, though my ability to collect began to wind down sometime around the release of EX Delta Species and my interest in the card game as a whole followed not long after. I sadly was barely a part of the scene for all of generation 4 and most of generation 5, which is a real shame, because looking back, I see generation 4 as the last time the "game" part of the trading card game was actually good. Then Next Destinies came out and Pokémon lost control of its power creep forever. But I digress.
Fast forward to around Plasma Blast, a new friend of mine introduced to me by my sister wanted to have a little fun with the cards we had laying around, so we made binder decks and did a few battles. None of them carried it on for very long, but I did. For the next few years, I bought packs here and there just for the fun of it and to see what new gimmicks they've thrown in to keep the meta fresh, but once Sun & Moon released, I punched my collector's spirit into overdrive. I made a spreadsheet to see how complete each set was in my collection and found Plasma Blast to be the most complete, so I decided that would be the first set I complete a master of. Back then I didn't know about TCGPlayer or Troll and Toad, so I managed to spend more than what I think the set is worth to complete it by buying through Amazon third-party sellers and eBay. I don't quite regret it, though, as back then completing the set was more important than minimizing the cost, and I did just that.
When I say master set, I mean the actually definition of the term. If there is a card with that set symbol on it, it counts as part of that master set. This means reverse holo cards, alternate holo patterns, league promos (including staff promos), Build-a-Bear exclusive, all of it. Some of those non-pack cards are harder to find than others, but they are out there.
Sun & Moon was still looking to be a little too expensive for me back then, though. I did buy a booster box for each new set to fill in the bulk, but the mass of secret rare cards made it difficult to keep up (and still does today), so since a friend of mine was collecting Generations and I had taken some time to get a fairly complete Radiant Collection, I set my sights on that next. There aren't a whole lot of irregular cards in that set except for the Toys-R-Us exclusives and the far less known (to Americans, anyway) Pikachu stamped promos. Those cost a bit of money, but I came out on top and collected those, too. Even got the full art Team Flare Grunt out of the Premium Trainer's XY Collection.
About that time was when Shining Legends dropped. I knew the Shining Pokémon from Neo Revelation and Neo Destiny were extremely valuable, so finishing that set seemed like it should be a high priority while they were all cheap. That set was helped tremendously by the fact that I pulled a rainbow Zoroark out of one of the Elite Trainer Boxes, and that was by far the most valuable card in the set back then. It ended up costing me just barely less than Generations overall, but I did complete it... three times. TPCi was still in the business of making non-pack promos for that set and they seemed to announce new ones right when I thought I had gotten all the cards. I think that set is done getting new cards for now, though. Maybe one more in SM's equivalent of the Premium Trainer's XY Collection, but also maybe not.
Nowadays I'm working on Hidden Fates, because as much as I think Shining Legends might continue to be a set that will grow in value as time goes, Hidden Fates will definitely be the set to want to have now while it's still in circulation. And I know I definitely won't want to be fighting to try and get a shiny Charizard GX in 5 years's time. Not all cards from the Shiny Vault will be so lucky, but cards of popular Pokémon like Charizard, Mewtwo, Gardevoir, the eeveelutions, and some of the gold cards will definitely be the cards to have in the future.
But I guess I've gotten way off-topic. The tl;dr of it is that I am a collector who searches for the most obscure cards and ensures that they at the very least are planned to be a part of my collection someday. Cards that, although they had an English release, they didn't get that much press. Cards that in some cases, not every collectors is even meant to have. Cards that most people didn't even know existed. I've searched far and wide and compiled the complete list of my findings into a massive spreadsheet filled to the brim with what I believe is every English card that exists in any form or any quality, with a couple of exceptions. Namely I'm certainly aware that I am a bit behind on updating the Jumbo Cards sheet and I believe there have been some unnumbered energies that I've neglected to look up. I also don't have any No. X Trainer cards in the sheet after 2016, although I do plan to add those at some point. And lastly, while there are some error cards that I think are interesting, I don't treat them as part of the main collection as errors can occasionally be subjective and a lot of kinds of errors, such as ink spots or spots the printer missed, are highly unlikely to have multiples of and therefore it's impossible to know all of the possible kinds of misprints for those cards. In general, aside from really cool and interesting misprints such as Prerelease Raichu or 1st Edition Ivy Pikachu, I don't really have much interest in collecting them.
So aaaalllll that wall of text basically comes down to this spreadsheet, where I have counted 24079 unique English Pokémon cards, counting reverse holos, alternate holo patterns, etc. as their own cards. This list is where I keep track of what cards I have from every single set, what quality they're in (based on my own standards, outlined in the Notes spreadsheet), when I got them, how much I payed, what slot in my binders they go in, how complete that set is, and more.
Generally I've kept this list to myself because, even though I consider my collection to be pretty good, I don't think it's all that impressive in a community that's been in the hardcore collecting scene since the beginning. But what I do think to be of value in this spreadsheet is the thoroughness of it. To my knowledge, there is no database that has such a complete list of every English card every printed. Even Bulbapedia, great as it is, fails in some accounts to mention things like staff promos, alternate holo patterns, or really obscure stuff, though I do try to stay on top of updating the wiki if I can.
All the sheets to the right of the Uncategorized sheet are incomplete or not really something I keep up with anymore, but I figured I'd keep them in because at one point I did try to keep up with that stuff. I added a Change Log sheet in February 2019 so I could better keep track of which cards I had already filled in. A few cards also show up twice. Ancient Mew is in the Black star Promos list before the Power of One legendary birds promos because I think it fits there, but it's also technically a Miscellaneous Promo, so it also show up on that list. The Unnumbered Energies also show up in the Misc Promos sheet even though they now have their own sheet. I haven't gotten around to filtered those out of the Misc Promos sheet yet.
The first sheet is a breakdown of all the cards I have from the main sets, including minisets like Double Crisis, Detective Pikachu, or Southern Islands. Minisets are highlighted in yellow. Beside each set is a number that identifies how many unique cards appear in the master set. As mentioned above, this includes reverse holos, alternate holo patterns, league promos, etc. as their own cards. Beside that is how many cards from that set I own, followed by a percentage showing the completion of that set, along with some dollar signs so I can remind myself to keep the cost down. It also shows which binders I can find cards from that set in, with binders I actually have marked with a green and binders I still need to get marked in red. I also threw in the release dates and set abbreviation for each set because I actually find that useful and this is a handy place for me look for that kind of thing.
The second sheet is basically the same thing, but for every card that wouldn't be part of a main set or a miniset. Black Star Promos, POP Series, Trainer Kits, etc. go here. At the top is also a breakdown of all the totality of the collection, showing how many cards out of everything ever printed that I have.
The next few sheets are for the individual cards, showing which binder and page slot they belong in. I double up reverse holos with their regular variants to save space, but I'm aware that some might be worried this could cause slight damage to the cards. So far I haven't observed this as a problem, and at the same time most of the valuable cards for recent sets don't have a second such variant. For earlier cards, especially Shadowless, I expect I might be concerned enough about their condition that I may not even put them in binders and will seek out a better method of storing them, but that's not a bridge I've led myself to need to cross yet, so I'm not terribly concerned on that front yet.
I store all my cards in KMC perfect fit card barriers and put them in BCW Z-Folio LX side-loading 12-slot binders with sides that zip up. Anything I don't have a binder for is stored in an Elite Trainer Box until I decide it's time for a new binder. The bulk of my collection lies in these binders.
Currently my most valued and I believe also my most valuable card is a Top-Thirty Two Tropical Tidal Wave from the HGSS Black Star Promo block. I found this for quite a good price, though I believe it's still the most money I've ever spent on a single card.
My favorite artworks to date are Vulpix and Ninetales from Call of Legends. HGSS in general was just a fantastic time for the Pokémon Trading Card Game, and easily the height of its greatness. Everything since then has been a sharp decline from the quality of those sets.
My favorite gimmicks are definitely delta species and Pokémon LEGEND. The former because it's such an interesting and unique take on Pokémon, and it's one of the very few blocks of cards that actually comes with lore and its own story, all executed in such a brilliant way that has since never been topped. The latter because the idea of having to play two cards at the same in order play 1 Pokémon with some of the best artwork in the entire cardgame was and still is the coolest idea anyone's ever come up with for the game. These cards are also the last time I think it was acceptable for a single KO to yield more than 1 prize, and certainly the best execution of that mechanic. Original lowercase Pokémon-ex were fun as well, and the only other time I liked this multi-prize business, but Pokémon LEGEND easily made the most sense for this to be a rule in the card game.
Other than all that, I don't think there's really much to say. If you have any questions, suggestions, comments, or know of any cards I've managed to overlook in my thorough research, feel free to reply to this thread!
Happy collecting!
